SU upgrade to 8.0.4811 (Maintenance 1)

Gaieus

DWG/DXF import was removed from 7.0 and substituted with a plugin in the free version. AFAIK it does not work in SU 8 (free) but I am not sure.

However you can always keep your old version 7 (I have 6, and and can even run them together at the same time. If nothing else, the shadow bug fix is worth upgrading to v.8 M1.

Bryan K

Thanks Gaieus.

I didn't know about the shadow bug. What is that all about?

Gaieus

When during an animation where shadows are on, the camera is travelling into/out of the shadow, it used to flicker. Just try it out.

Now it's fixed.

RHPLUS

I checked out V-ray for SU8. There is possibility to use HDRI 360 panoramas as a background and source of natural light in scene, but this is very difficult to positionning this panoramas in accordance to real sun position.My proposition is to enlarge options in styles settings and let set 360 HDRI or raster panorama as a background instead of color sky and ground.

Al Hart

[This is probably getting off-topic]

When 360 HDRIs were "invented" the idea was to stitch together actual photographs to create Panoramic images. But no provision was made in the HDRi format to specify where the sun happened to be when the image was taken, (and what time, date, and location was used for the image). It it were, then we could attempt to rotate the image (automatically) to have the sun direction match the SketchUp sun direction. But, of course, we could not change the date, time or location of the original HDRi image to match the SketchUp sun time. (Since the HDRi image has already been taken)

These backgrounds provide great illumination and reflections. But I, (after admitting to by prejudice in this matter), think that SketchUp should leave the interface and rendering of HDRi backgrounds to the add-on renderers.

HDRI rendering

Original SketchUp Model

@rhplus said:

I checked out V-ray for SU8. There is possibility to use HDRI 360 panoramas as a background and source of natural light in scene, but this is very difficult to positionning this panoramas in accordance to real sun position.My proposition is to enlarge options in styles settings and let set 360 HDRI or raster panorama as a background instead of color sky and ground.

Gaieus

@al hart said:

...I [...] think that SketchUp should leave the interface and rendering of HDRi backgrounds to the add-on renderers.

SU has nothing to do with 3rd party renderers and even if it had - which one then? (Why V-ray for instance?)

thomthom

@gaieus said:

@al hart said:

...I [...] think that SketchUp should leave the interface and rendering of HDRi backgrounds to the add-on renderers.

SU has nothing to do with 3rd party renderers and even if it had - which one then? (Why V-ray for instance?)

But it would be cool to use environment maps in SketchUp...

jason_maranto

I'd like this too -- and not just for rendering engine use but also I think it could be very powerful as part of styles... I'm thinking of starry skies or city backdrops as being very nice touches that could be put to great use in both Sketchup and Layout.

Best,
Jason.

Al Hart

You can use watermarks to add foreground and background images to your model.

Won't this do what you are looking for?

su background.jpg

We have a lot of trouble with users first starting with 360 degrees HDRI backgrounds. One problem is that the part of the background you see in the image above is about 30 degrees or 1/12 or the whole 360 degrees - so to get good resolution - say 1280 pixels for the background - you need 12 * 1280, or 15,000 pixels in your HDRI image. And a 15,360 x 15,360 pixel image (remember that the HDRI goes 360 degrees in both directions), you need a very large image, just to grab a little of it for the background.

This is necessary if you are using the image for reflections and illumination. But a lot of extra work if you are just using it for a background.

thomthom

@al hart said:

Won't this do what you are looking for?

It would be good to have background that rotate with the model when you orbit the camera, instead of just the static background.

jason_maranto

Of course, but it does not allow for orbiting freely to get the composition you might prefer (a major strength of 3D).

There is a difference between bit-depth and resolution -- for rendering you need high bit-depth (High Dynamic Range) which results in huge files, but for on-screen styles a simple 8-bit jpeg representation will work fine and would allow for much smaller images (file size).

I don't think anybody is pretending you would use these while modelling -- this would be a presentation/render (layout or otherwise) only feature.

Best,
Jason.

Al Hart

@thomthom said:

@al hart said:

Won't this do what you are looking for?

It would be good to have background that rotate with the model when you orbit the camera, instead of just the static background.

I seem to recall that someone did some work of placing a panoramic image on the inside of a sphere which could then be placed outside of the model.

RHPLUS

Let me explain my earlier suggestion on this examples:

I decided to make a real image showing interior of this building. This is snapshot from SU8:

My idea was not to use electric lamps, only natural sketchup default sun light and additional enviroment light together with sun.
Here are my trials:

at the end is snap from HDRI panorama.
There are many settings in V-ray and I tried all uf them, but the most important is to make ideal accordance of sun position and panorama.

And another examples:

and panorama:

Every reflections are natural from sun and environment.

That's what for I want to have a real background in sketchup scene.

Rich O Brien

@al hart said:

@thomthom said:

@al hart said:

Won't this do what you are looking for?

It would be good to have background that rotate with the model when you orbit the camera, instead of just the static background.

I seem to recall that someone did some work of placing a panoramic image on the inside of a sphere which could then be placed outside of the model.

I think it was Richard that developed some sort of alignment dome with sun inside also. Can't find it, sorry.

numerobis

yes, a function to display and position HDRIs or even 2:1 panoramic JPGs would be helpful!

Al Hart

We are considering a free plugin to take HDRi panoramic images and convert them to background images which would work in the current view. (It not as good as having the background automatically change with the view. Although that would be possible later - with a slight pause to grab the new background from the HDRi panorama).

As a first step I tried using the SketchUp Watermark Backgrounds as a vehicle to hold and display the image.
(The idea wold be to automatically create a background image from the HDRi and automatically place it and position it as a background)

Has anyone been using these Watermarks for backgrounds. Do they work well and/or are they a bit cumbersome to use.

(And, of course, I am assuming I can place background image into the current style using ruby. Has anyone tried this already?)

thomthom

@al hart said:

(And, of course, I am assuming I can place background image into the current style using ruby. Has anyone tried this already?)

This is a good question... I'm not really sure how. I wanted to do something with watermarks via ruby a little bit ago - but I couldn't immediately figure out how. And I never got around to investigate further...

RHPLUS

Another suggestion is to integrate Sketchup with a realtime rendering application eg. Lumion, Twinmotion or another. I know that in nearest future all architectural applications will be oblige to use this technology (directry from games). First one who will do that, will be world's leader and I believe that this will be Google Sketchup (my favorite tool in everyday work). I will be first customer.
Just today Lumion gets models straight from 3d Warehouse. Integration should be easier then with V-ray.